Business Intelligence Lowdown

High-Speed Data Processor From IBM

System z9 Integrated Information Processor (zIIP engine), the new high-speed data processor from IBM, is expected to enhance and expedite data processing tasks related to customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and business intelligence (BI) computing processes. The data processor is built to work in tandem with IBM's DB2 database. Users of IBM z9 mainframes can upgrade to the zIIP engine for $125,000.  Biz Intelligence Pipeline reports:

The zIIP processor comes on the heels of other specialty processors that IBM has been adding to the mainframe, including the zAAP processor made available in 2004 for speeding Java applications. The zIIP specialty processor will be available before the end of the year, but IBM officials would not be more specific.

Analytics and Performance Management

It is difficult to draw the line that differentiates analytics from performance management in a call center. Analytics tools are usually integrated within performance management software, hence the confusion between the two. Analytics refers to the use of information from various sources to generate quantitative and comparative reports of past and ongoing call records. Performance management applies quality measures on analytics to derive quantitative information from them.

A report listing the number of calls, the people who attended those calls, the duration of the calls, and the customers who called, can be generated from the Automatic Call Distributor (ACD). Analytics can add an extra dimension to the report by combining it with sales figures and drawing parallels between the amount of time spent on calls that translates directly into increased sales. With performance management, call recordings can be analyzed and judged to gauge customers' responses and agents' performance. This information can then be used to regulate how calls are routed handled, and how service personnel are scheduled. 

Reporting, analytics and performance management can thus be visualized as three layers of the same application __ that of improving performance and reducing costs in a call center. If reporting has a single dimension to it, analytics is two-dimensional, while performance management is three-dimensional.

Another way of perceiving the difference between analytics and performance management is by looking at the user of the information generated from each application, says David Middleton of AIM Technology. Analytics generally provide the top management of the company with an overall picture of what is going on in the call center. Performance management on the other hand, is used to enhance the functioning style of agents who handle calls.

Though performance management does help in giving answers when analytics cannot, most vendors do not differentiate between the two. They are both types of business intelligence software that are being increasingly used to add value and quality to the call center, and integrate its operations with that of the enterprise.

Teradata Data Warehouse Heads East

ABN AMRO, the international banking services provider, will implement a data warehouse platform from Teradata, provider of enterprise analytic technologies and services, to support business development for its consumer businesses in Asia. The regional data warehouse (RDW) will first be rolled out at the bank's Taiwan branches, followed by those in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and China, to analyze customer revenue, monitor credit risk metrics, and handle customer relationship management (CRM). Data Warehouse Knowledge Base reports:

"ABM AMRO is deeply rooted in Asian financial markets," said Jim Brown, head of the Asia Consumer Client Segment of ABN AMRO. "To better serve our customers and fulfill the needs of the company's marketing management and risk control, we need a robust decision support platform. After a thorough vendor evaluation process, we decided to work with Teradata to deploy our data warehouse and CRM solution."

BI From Call Centers

Instead of just serving as customer service hubs, call centers are evolving as business intelligence gathering points. Quality monitoring technology and analysis tools are being leveraged to extract customer intelligence from conversations with clients.

Customer interactions hold a hoard of information about buying trends and competitive products and services. This information can be mined using speech analytic tools that map words and phrases to find the root cause of customer problems. Word and phrase identification implements can be used in conjunction with emotion detection tools to recognize and detect spoken and unspoken information about each call.

However, only only a minority of call centers use quality monitoring and business intelligence tools, as many business units are still separate from the centers that handle their customer service obligations. With the trend slowly but steadily gaining popularity, there will be more organizations joining those who are using analytics to generate more revenue.

Customer Data Integration

Effective data management is not that easily achieved, according to a Forrest Research report which states that even though 92% of companies surveyed believe that a consolidated and integrated view of customer data is vital to the success of an organization, only 2% of them have managed to successfully deploy what is known as customer data integration.

Customer data integration (CDI) is defined as the process of consolidating and managing customer information from all available sources. Customer contact details, customer valuation data, and information garnered through various interactions with customers are structured and organized to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date view of the customer database.

This aspect makes CDI a key element of customer relationship management. It is a business necessity these days to clean, manage, process, and maintain customer data because CDI projects, though technically complex, can deliver meaningful customer data to the entire organization.

aCRM – Poised for Rapid Growth

Datamonitor, the UK-based independent market analyst, has predicted that investment in analytical customer relationship management (aCRM) technology will grow from $2.3 billion in the present to over $3 billion is the year 2009. aCRM, a complex part of the business intelligence (BI) market, is defined as the active collection, concentration and analysis of data gathered about customers and their interaction with businesses. According to Tom Pringle, technology analyst at Datamonitor and author of the study titled “Analytical CRM”, growth is already at a high, stable level, a reflection of some maturity in the wider BI market in North America and Western Europe. Domain B reports:

However with confusion and lack of understanding among end users regarding aCRM and its uses, it will be imperative for vendors to educate enterprises across all verticals as to the aCRM function, its working, uses and benefits.

Smart Products and the Future of Business

'Smart products' are those that leverage intelligent, embedded microprocessors and the Internet to give customers greater satisfaction throughout the product lifecycle. Smart products use Internet-delivered services to personalise themselves to the customer. Since service becomes integral to the product, vendors of smart products provide help with tasks, answers to questions, helpful value-added services, or solutions to a technical problem. All this is done without disrupting their usage of the product. At the helm of smart products are vendors of traditional technology products. This trend will transcend traditional technology products, and almost all product vendors will eventually offer smart products. Embedded systems are creating increasingly sophisticated mobile telephone services. Embedded systems are enabling Internet appliances to make inroads in businesses such as hospitality, healthcare, financial services and education industries. CRM Today reports:

With today's increasingly sophisticated service software, vendors can create products that proactively update themselves with new features or head off problems at the pass via "self-healing." Products can opportunistically look for ways to help the customer work smarter or get smarter: for example, a vendor of small-business accounting software could provide built-in access to live experts that augment certain features of the product.

The Role of Web Services

Web services are applications that can be used via Internet, using protocols such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). They are published on universal registries called UDDI (Universal Description , Discovery and Integration). Why would anyone prefer Web Services over other distributed computing methods such as DCOM (Distributed Componenet Object Model) or CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), which are faster, thinner (binary standards) than Web Services? The answer lies in the fact that XML is universally accepted. That is why, using XML to send data across is much simpler than using any other technology for data exchange. CRM vendors prefer to expose their application functionalities through Web Services. This way, the integration with an existing system or developing a future system on top of the CRM system becomes simpler. It is easy to develop a Web-based application to access the data residing on the CRM database by accessing the data through Web Services. The CRM application's features such as the Pricing engines and the Marketing Optimizer Engines can be used by the web application. CRM Today reports:

Also unlike the traditional integration methods, Web services require both ends to support XML/SOAP. That requires the whole industry to be in sync with Web Services. Otherwise it will lead Integrators to build middle layers or Web services on behalf of the software vendors(Like building a web service to access your mainframe application - that you don't want to replace - and send SOAP/XML messages to the CRM application).

The Customer's Perspective

One of the prominent reasons for CRM project failures is limited or no input from the customer's perspective. When we are devising and conducting a CRM project, customer input is vital for success. Customers basically want value, convenience, and they want to be recognised and valued as an individual. To achieve this, break your CRM project into two categories - internal and external. Internal forces constitute issues such as business strategy, organisational structures, processes, people skills, technology and metrics. External forces are about customer experience. Value involves price, among other things. Convenience is about things such as providing transparency and and about offering customers the ability to contact you when and where they require, across channels. CRM Today reports:

The thing about convenience, the explosion of consumer technologies and the creation of an "always on" communication channel is that it puts greater strain on the bank or insurance company than on the customer. This is because ubiquitous access - and the expectations of attendant service levels - tends to be mostly one way, i.e. from the customer to the financial institution.

The Customer Loyalty Grid

On the Customer Loyalty Grid, there are four zones:

The Zone of Indifference - Here, the unstated expectations of the customer are not met. This includes all customer needs and wants that are basic to fulfilling the unwritten contract between you and them.

The Zone of Satisfaction - Here, the stated expectations of the customer are met. The customers tell you what is important to them.

The Zone of Delight - Here, the stated expectations, which were not really expected are met. The customer hopes for something, even asks for it, but really does not expect you to provide it.

The Zone of Loyalty - Here, an unstated and unexpected level of service is provided, making the customer loyal. Expectations are exceeded. In this area, use your expertise in in the particular product or service coupled with the customer's lack of expertise to provide benefits above and beyond what the customer is even aware. For this, you have to be very proactive in suggesting to customers new innovations that they can benefit from. Remember that there are no shortcuts to get to the Zone of Loyalty. It is important that you first conquer the other zones. CRM Today reports:

For example, airbags in automobiles when first introduced were an innovation that saved lives, but customers had no way of asking for this innovation, or expecting it, before it became known to them.